Souls Take Wing

Marilyn Chamberlin was among 150 family members, some coming from as far away as Italy, to dedicate a monument to the 110 victims of the ValuJet flight that dove nose-first into a Florida swamp in 1996, killing all aboard. Chamberlin’s daughter, Candalyn Kubeck, was the pilot. Volunteers designed and built the memorial, an arrangement of 110 concrete pillars topped by pyramids, in Everglades National Park. The columns rest on a triangular platform that points toward the crash site. A center aisle divides the rows, widening as the structure rises. “For me the design is an allegory, the rise of the victim’s souls and the fall of the fateful plane,” said Lee Sawyer, a teacher whose parents died in the crash.